{"id":60088,"date":"2025-08-11T13:38:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T13:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/60088\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T13:38:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T13:38:11","slug":"soaring-unemployment-has-kiwis-raiding-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/60088\/","title":{"rendered":"Soaring unemployment has Kiwis raiding Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, Statistics New Zealand reported that the nation\u2019s unemployment rate rose to 5.2% in Q2 2025, the highest rate since Q4 2016.<\/p>\n<p>As illustrated below by Justin Fabo from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.antipodeanmacro.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Antipodean Macro<\/a>, New Zealand\u2019s underemployment rate also surged, suggesting significant surplus capacity in the labour market.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/NZ-spare-capacity-1.png\" width=\"660\" height=\"560\" alt=\"NZ spare capacity\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The rise in New Zealand\u2019s labour underutilisation rate comes despite a significant decline in the nation\u2019s labour force participation rate.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/NZ-participation-rates.png\" width=\"660\" height=\"528\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Antipodean participation rates\"\/><\/p>\n<p>A wide gap has emerged between Australia\u2019s unemployment rate, which was 4.3% in June 2025, versus New Zealand\u2019s at 5.2%.<\/p>\n<p>As illustrated below, New Zealand enjoyed lower unemployment than Australia between 2013 and 2023. However, the role has reversed.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/NZ-vs-Aus-UE.png\" width=\"624\" height=\"477\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Unemployment rates\"\/><\/p>\n<p>One consequence has been a sharp rise in migration from New Zealand to Australia.<\/p>\n<p>As illustrated below by Alex Joiner from IFM Investors, immigration between the two nations tends to track the difference in unemployment rates.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/NZ-net-migration-to-Australia.png\" width=\"660\" height=\"528\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"NZ net migration to Australia\"\/><\/p>\n<p>When Australia\u2019s unemployment rate is lower than New Zealand\u2019s, it has historically been associated with a strong inflow of Kiwis to Australia in search of job opportunities.<\/p>\n<p>Other labour market indicators, such as SEEK\u2019s job ads and applications per job ad series, suggest that New Zealand\u2019s labour market remains incredibly soft.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/NZ-Seek-employment-data.png\" width=\"660\" height=\"482\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"SEEK NZ\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, ANZ Senior Economist Miles Workman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrobusiness.com.au\/2025\/08\/reserve-bank-to-slash-rates-to-ward-off-mass-unemployment\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">warned<\/a> last week that the unemployment rate could rise to 6% if employers stop hoarding workers and \u201cright size\u201d in the coming months.<\/p>\n<p>Workman estimated that this labour hoarding has kept the unemployment around 0.5% lower than otherwise in recent quarters and that the labour market could soon \u201cbe hit with a double whammy: weaker-than-otherwise demand for labour and a shedding of hoarded labour\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe recent deterioration in the high-frequency data combined with signs that firms\u2019 capacity to hold out for the recovery is diminishing suggests risks are skewed to weaker labour market outcomes than we or the RBNZ have been forecasting for the next year or so\u201d, Workman wrote.<\/p>\n<p>If New Zealand\u2019s labour market continues to weaken, then Australia could see the flow of Kiwis increase beyond current historically high levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week, Statistics New Zealand reported that the nation\u2019s unemployment rate rose to 5.2% in Q2 2025, the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164],"class_list":["post-60088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}